


your name is dorothy

by Nightblaze



Category: The Wilds (TV 2020)
Genre: Character Study, Dot-Centric, Gen, POV Second Person, nonbinary coding, tagged dotin but its really not the main focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28354110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightblaze/pseuds/Nightblaze
Summary: Your name is Dorothy but people just say Dot.Your name is Dorothy but your father used to call you Dottie.Your name is Dorothy and there is a girl who doesn’t want to call you by a nickname.
Relationships: Dot Campbell/Fatin Jadmani
Comments: 10
Kudos: 84





	your name is dorothy

**Author's Note:**

> this is totally not me just projecting

Your name is Dorothy but people just say Dot.

It must have started when you were a baby, because you never made the decision to go by Dot. On the first day of every school year, you just heard your name called during attendance and said,  _ it’s just Dot. _ The few times you introduce yourself to people, you don’t mention your full name. It’s always just Dot.

It’s not that you hate the name Dorothy, it’s just that it doesn’t really seem like you. Dorothy feels like the dresses you wore when you were little, like the pop songs your elementary school friends loved but you thought all sounded the same, like the full face of makeup you once tried and immediately swore never to do again. Dot feels like rocking out with your dad in the kitchen, like stealing clothes he doesn’t wear anymore and finally thinking you look good in the mirror, like coloring your hair for the first time and having to wash out the marker dye from the sink.

Maybe one day you’d like your name, but not while it still held all of that in it. Until then, it was Dot, and you glare at anybody who calls you anything else.

* * *

Your name is Dorothy but your father used to call you Dottie.

It was a piece of your childhood, from before he got sick. He only ever says your full name when he’s angry at you, or when he’s really serious, and he rarely gets angry. 

You aren’t a little girl anymore. By all accounts you’ve outgrown such a childish nickname. You’ve changed your father’s underwear and carried him between his bed and the toilet. You’ve cooked breakfasts and dinners and done the laundry for years, you’ve sold pills to sleazeballs around the town to stay afloat. You feel like more of an adult than most of the teachers at school and you’re barely seventeen.

Still, though, you let him call you Dottie, because it makes him happy. It’s just another little thing to help him. Anything to help him.

On the island, Shelby sometimes calls you Dottie. You aren’t quite sure where she got the notion that it’s okay for her to do that from, but she got it somewhere, and it’s like a knife to the heart every time she does. She doesn’t understand why it hurts. You don’t want to explain it, because that means telling her everything—including the nice spring day when you killed him.

It was what he wanted, but you still killed him, and God, how could he ask you to do that? You  _ could  _ do it—anything to help him, you’d promised yourself—you just wish you didn’t have to.

The last time he said your name, he said  _ Dorothy Jane Campbell,  _ and you hate the nickname Dottie but you would give everything to hear him say it one more time.

You watch the sun set, watch green light when it flashes at the horizon.

He would have loved it.

* * *

Your name is Dorothy and there is a girl who doesn’t want to call you by a nickname.

Fatin doesn’t have a filter, but when she says your name, she speaks each syllable with clarity and thought, like she’s savoring it. Like it’s delicate, an eon-old relic she doesn’t want to break. Like she knows the power it holds over you.

Maybe it’s because you are hundreds of miles away from anybody else, stuck on an island away from the expectations of society, or maybe it’s just something about her, but the point is the name never really felt like it belonged to you until it fell from her lips.

And man, that’s scary.

You like her more than you probably should. You’re something of a leader of the castaways and it’s a bad idea to value somebody over anyone else, just in case something happens. You have to make choices with your head, not your heart, when you’re stranded on an island.

You’ll talk to Fatin later. There will be a day when you and her are living together in Los Angeles, just like you talk about, and you will sit her down and tell her everything, even all the shit you’ve barely started to figure out yourself but you’re sure you will have a better handle on by then. She will take your hand and tell you  _ Dorothy, it’s going to be okay, _ and you will do your best to believe her.

For now, though, all you have to do is survive.


End file.
